As communications technologies continually develop, people are imposing more demands on network services. To meet various demands of users, a higher rate and a lower delay are required for network transmission, which requires a more efficient interconnection solution available in a data interchange network.
A switch is a network device used for data forwarding. The switch may provide an exclusive data path for any two network nodes that are connected to the switch. In an optical network, an electrical switch is used in the prior art to implement data exchange. During electrical switching, optical-to-electrical conversion needs to be performed on a received optical signal to convert the optical signal into an electrical signal, and the electrical signal is exchanged to a destination port; and then the electrical signal is converted into the optical signal by means of electrical-to-optical conversion, and the optical signal is sent. In this way, a switching process is completed. This, however, increases a delay and energy consumption for data processing in a data exchange process of the optical network.